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Lonecat in Orbit 13 |
 By Lonecat
Hello again from Lonecat out here in orbit. This week, because of some technical problems I have experienced over the last eight days I'm afraid that the material, or some of it at least, is a bit on the out-of-date side but I hope that, by next week, things will be back, more or less, to normal.
They say that the truth is out here, but you know, the more I think about it, the more I become convinced that the Truth is everywhere. It depends on one’s interpretation. With the “attitude” of this space vehicle stabilized, everything outside the observation port seems to be either motionless or to be moving in very gradual stateliness and yet everything is “really” moving at a rate of thousands of mile/kms. an hour. When we see astronauts going about their work outside the space shuttle or on the Hubble space telescope there is no sense of the enormity of the velocity that those objects, including the astronauts themselves, are travelling at in their orbits around the Earth.
When I go outside the BoT-OSV (Book-of-Thoth Orbital Space Vehicle) and look at her shining in the Sunlight, she appears to hang in the void quite motionless, as I would appear if someone were to regard me through the port from inside the ship. The stars, at first glance appear stationary and unblinking as they twinkle only when seen through the Earth’s atmosphere. Any movement of them at all is due only to my movement, within the BoT-OSV around the Earth and the Earth’s orbit around the Sun. The passage of the constellations across the heavens as seen from Earth is due only to the fact that it can be witnessed only at night on that side of the Earth that is turned away from the Sun and, as the Earth takes a year to circle the Sun, it takes us a year to observe the seasonal movements of the stars. All seems so slow and majestic. The Sun takes an average of twelve hours to traverse the sky from dawn to Sunset, depending on the latitude from which it is observed and the season of the year and yet our planet is rotating at an average speed of 465.101 meters/second. Is that fast or slow? It depends on what you call “fast” doesn’t it. Earth “rushes” through space in its orbit around the Sun at the incredible rate of nine miles or 14.49 kilometers a second? This may seem very fast but when you consider nine miles in proportion to the diameter of the Earth, it seems very slow indeed. You can get a very good idea of whether this is fast or not by placing a large dinner plate, face down upon a table (or imagine that you are doing this) and suppose that represents the Earth. Now consider: what proportion of the plate’s diameter would represent nine miles ( or 14.49 kilometers) and move the plate that distance once every second for a minute a or two (assuming you have enough patience) and you will conclude that this is very slow motion indeed. We say that light is the fastest “thing” in the universe and yet it takes 500,000 years to cross our Milky Way galaxy. The scale of light years is necessary for measuring astronomical distances rather that mile or kilometers. To measure distances between astronomical points in kilometers would be far more cumbersome than measuring, say, the height of Mount Everest in fractions of a millimeter and even light years are difficult to grasp . Our Milky Way has an average diameter of 500,000 light years, so, it takes light, the fast thing in the universe, five hundred thousand years, to get from one side of the galaxy to the other and remember that that is at a speed or velocity of 299,792.458 kms. per second. If I remember more or less exactly, that is about 186,000 miles a second.
Well, I have just had a signal from Earth which I must attend to so I shall continue with these speculations next week.
HUBBLE TRUBBLE
Nigelelan sent us this story about the Hubble space telescope and the troubles it is experiencing. Viruses in computers in space do not make me, here in orbit feel all that comfortable. Nigelelan writes:
"Just like viruses in my Computer and no doubt in everybody elses Computers, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Computer glitches have not yet fully been fixed, in spite of an attempted reboot. No doubt the viruses attacked HST's Computer Systems through the e-mail system relayed back and forth from Earth. Even in Space, a Computer System is now prone to virus attack and thus in the future could endanger Missions and Human Life.
Until the Manned mission in mid-February next year, HST will be having a rest, sending no photographs back to Earth".
Click on this link to learn more about that:
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts125/081021hubble/
MYSTERIOUS RING AROUND DEAD STAR
This item dates back to May of this year but I had never seen it. Maybe you had. I agree with th what the lady says:Stefanie Wachter of NASA's Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology. "The universe is a big place and weird things can happen!"
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/29may_magnetar.htm
THOSE MAGNICENT TELESCOPES IN THEIR FLYING MACHINES
Did you ever consider the possibility of a flying observatory? What about the movements of the telescope that would be involved? Well...
The sofia observatory
This link will take you to an article about an international conference on safety in space which is to be held in Rome this month.
http://tinyurl.com/55m8dw
Did you ever consider the possibility of a flying obersvatory? What about the movements of the telescope that would be involved? Well...
The sofia observatory
MARS LANDER PHOENIX EXCEEDS ALL EXPECTATIONS
Phoenix is alive and well long after it demise had been expected and is still sending much more information to Earth than ever was expected. One of its instruments has been observed waving in the Martian wind.
Tinyurl went dead for a while when I wanted it on Friday evening so here is the original link.
http://spacefellowship.com/News/?p=7030
THE ORIGINS OF PHOBOS
Hey, this article about the possible origin of Mars's larger moon, Phobos, is really great with several top quality photos of Phobos, including a 3D animated picture of the Martian satellite.
European space scientists are getting closer to unravelling the origin of Mars’ larger moon, Phobos. Thanks to a series of close encounters by ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft, the moon looks almost certain to be a ‘rubble pile’, rather than a single solid object. However, mysteries remain about where the rubble came from.
http://tinyurl.com/4lm8m8
...then this came in on Thursday. Sometimes I wonder if people will ever get blasé about the ever more fantastic pictures we keep receiving from beyond the Earth! Consider the detail we get nowadays. Then think back to the OLD days when we were young and reading space comics and wondering what the 21st Century would be like! Gosh! If you're really a space fan then you will like this one.
http://tinyurl.com/539cyn
THE SEARCH FOR EARTH-LIKE PLANETS CONTINUES
Here is a NASA article which tells us about the mission to search for small, Earth-like planets. This website contains a lot of interesting sublinks
http://tinyurl.com/3ofj8w
...and when we consider whether the conditions on other planet are suitable for the evolution of life, we should not miss out on considering the effects of tides, as I was reminded this week (Wednesday) by this article which also contains some good videos:
http://tinyurl.com/479jht
LIQUID TELESCOPE-MIRRORS ON THE MOON
Pencil sent us this report on plans to build telescopes with liquid mirrors on the Moon. I imagine we will have to wait for a few years yet before this can become a reality.
Amazing what scientist comes up with and what science can do.
http://tinyurl.com/4oghmz
MORE PICTURE POSTCARDS FROM CASSINI MISSION AT SATURN
And now more from the Cassini mission at Saturn. See the giant vortex at Saturn's south pole! See also the recent close fly-by pictures of Saturn's moon Enceladus.
New Cassini spacecraft views of the monstrous vortex at Saturn’s south pole are providing valuable insight about the mechanisms that power the planet’s atmosphere.
NASA's Cassini spacecraft acquired images of Saturn’s south polar vortex on July 15 that are ten times more detailed than any seen before. Previous images revealed an outer ring of high clouds surrounding a region previously thought to be mostly clear air interspersed with a few puffy clouds that circulate around the center. The new images show that the puffy clouds are vigorous convective storms that form yet another distinct, inner ring.
“What looked like puffy clouds in lower resolution images are turning out to be deep convective structures seen through the atmospheric haze,” said Cassini imaging team member Dr. Tony DelGenio of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. “One of them has punched through to a higher altitude and created its own little vortex.”
The “eye” of the vortex is surrounded by an outer ring of high clouds. This ring is 4,000 kilometers, or 2,500 miles, wide, and its high clouds cast shadows, indicating they are 40 to 70 kilometers, or 25 to 45 miles, above the clouds inside the ring. The new images hint at an inner ring about half the diameter of the main ring, and so the actual clear “eye” region is smaller than it appeared in earlier low-resolution images.
http://tinyurl.com/5fdhxc
SOLAR ACTIVITY RISING AGAIN
New spots are beginning to break out on the face of the Sun and may signal the end of a dry spell in solar activity. Watching for more spots in the coming months could help determine how severe – and potentially damaging to Earth's satellites and power grids – the next solar cycle will be. This article also contains some interesting stereo images.
http://tinyurl.com/4n9xzf
SPITZER INFRA-RED TELESCOPE PEEKS INSIDE COMET HOLMES
"The data we got from Spitzer do not look like anything we typically see when looking at comets," said Bill Reach of NASA's Spitzer Science Center.
http://tinyurl.com/4w9fyo
COLOSSAL BLACK HOLES IN THE EARLY UNIVERSE
Now, scientists say that far from being a result of eons of time, "Colossal" Black Holes were already extant when the universe was yug. (sorry about that but have slight cold)
http://tinyurl.com/6fwmoz
NEW, AIRCRAFT-LAUNCHED SATELLITE TO STUDY EDGE OF SOLAR SYSTEM
IBX
A PICTURE I TOOK A WHILE BACK FROM BoT-OSV
No, I'm only joking although I can also see such views of Earth through the ship's Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope. Take a look at Russia's largest lake as seen from the viewpont of Earth orbit by clicking here: http://tinyurl.com/5erfcc
And finally, if you are interested as I am in making and viewing planets in 3D here is a good selection photos of Mars which you can use to make 3D images. Just print them out, and select any two pictures of the Red Planet which show a moderate difference in parallax, work out which is for the left eye and for the right, paste the two photos onto a piece of card and insert the card into a 19th century-style stereoscope (or make one yourself) and hey presto! You have a picture of Mars in 3D! For even greater effect place a white dot close to the edge of the image of the planet but in exactly the same place in the frame of each photo, so that it has no paralax and then view the result. You will see Mars not only in the round but appearing to hang in space with a distant star in the background. Here are the pictures.
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080714.html
Do have fun! I'll be back next week. Keep your eyes peeled!
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